October 15th – Top Stories

1/ US

- Senators Near Fiscal Deal, but the House Is Uncertain - NYT – By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JEREMY W. PETERS

Senate leaders neared the completion Monday night of a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown while the rest of the world braced for the possibility of an American default that could set off a global financial disaster.

Negotiators talked into the evening as senators from both parties coalesced around a plan that would lift the debt limit through Feb. 7, pass a resolution to finance the government through Jan. 15 and conclude formal discussions on a long-term tax and spending plan no later than Dec. 13, according to one Senate aide briefed on the plan.

China’s money-supply growth slowed in September and new local-currency loans were more than forecast, data from the People’s Bank of China today showed.

M2, China’s broadest measure of money supply, rose 14.2 percent from a year earlier, the Beijing-based central bank said in a statement on its website. That compared with the median economist estimate of 14.2 percent in a Bloomberg News survey and 14.7 percent in August.

3/ Eurozone

- ECB Nowotny: Still No EZ Way Out for Suffering Sovereigns - MNI – By Steven Levine

European Central Bank Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said Monday that while Europe’s debt crisis has recently receded from headlines, structural problems generally remain within certain Eurozone member countries.

Speaking to an audience at Columbia University Law School, Nowotny, head of the Austrian National Bank, outlined the status of arriving at longer-term objectives towards sustainable growth and risk preparedness within the Eurozone, including a European Banking Union.

The ECB maintains a long-term price stability goal, in-line with its single mandate, to avoid both inflation and deflation, and maintain an inflation rate “close to but not more than 2%,” Nowotny said.